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The Breakfast Briefing

The bond run is over!

Well, not quite, although it seems like every time yields rise somebody makes that call. Still, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note did rise sharply yesterday, hitting 1.78% (highest since late October) amid the latest signs that the fiscal-cliff budget talks may yet yield (no pun intended) a solution. As the idea of the economy pitching headlong over a cliff and into an abyss recedes, the safe-haven attraction of Treasurys is receding as well. Prices go down. Yields go up.

This is good news for stocks, of course. The Dow rose 100 points yesterday, and is now within a couple hundred points of its year high. If Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner can steer some kind of deal through Congress, traders could end the year on a high note.

That could set up equities to make a run at their all-time highs, marked back in the halcyon days of 2007, when the Dow crested at 14165 and the S&P 500 hit 1565.

But all’s not well up here on top of the cliff. Those Treasury yields are still, historically speaking, extremely low (they did hit an all-time low this summer, recall), reflecting both the steady presence of one large buyer, the Fed, as well as the continuing fears that the next financial crisis is only a headline away.

So while risk assets are getting a good swift kick from the world’s central banks, no matter how aggressive central bank policy gets, it can’t chase investors out of those safe havens.

Treasurys are sort of in a no-lose situation. Even if a fiscal cliff deal is struck, it’s likely to involve some amount of austerity. That means less Treasury debt to issue. Meanwhile, there’s still a big buyer in the market, the Fed. Less supply, same demand should equal higher prices. If another crisis does come (or if the economy just stays its steady, stagnant self), the safe haven flows will pick up again.

This won’t last forever, though. “We still believe that rates will rise gradually in the intermediate term, but continued economic and credit challenges, as well as an extremely accommodative Fed, could cap upside rate movements in the near term,” the team at Wells Fargo Wealth Management wrote.

At some point, the Fed very well may chase the last bond buyer out of the fox hole. The Wells team noted that about half of its 2012 concerns were resolved, and it’s relatively sanguine about 2013′s prospects.

Although the firm was definitive about one purported uncertainty: “The sun will rise on Dec. 22, and many days after that. Don’t stop monitoring your investments.”

Morning MarketBeat Daily Factoid: On this day in 1912, the skeletal remains of the Piltdown Man, a purported missing link between man and ape, were “discovered” in a gravel pit in Sussex, England. It would take 41 years, but eventually the find was exposed as a hoax.

The White House for the first time abandoned its effort to raise tax rates on income above $250,000 Monday, one element of its counteroffer to Republicans as both sides try to craft a deal before the end of the year and avoid the so-called fiscal cliff.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest seller of guns and ammunition in the country, on Monday removed a website listing for a semiautomatic assault rifle similar to the gun used in the Newtown, Conn., school massacre.

A regulatory investigation into whether stock exchanges have given unfair advantages to high-speed traders has sparked complaints against the exchanges, fueling a broader debate about how the market operates and is regulated.

The spread of economic hardship is fraying Greece’s social fabric and straining its political cohesion as the country enters the harshest winter of its three-year-old debt crisis. Even the tightknit Greek family—an institution that has helped the population to absorb a collapse in employment—is under pressure as household incomes dwindle.

Apple Inc. is in early discussions to integrate local data from Foursquare Labs Inc. into its mapping application, according to people familiar with the talks, as the company continues to build an arsenal of local data to try to take on Google Inc.

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